I’ve spent the last couple of weeks grading end-of-term essays, while simultaneously scrambling to pull together syllabi and reading lists for my two new courses.* Over the Christmas break, however, I forced myself to slow down for a bit and read a few full books related to my research.

I recently acquired a gorgeous vintage accent chair that also happens to be incredibly comfortable. In the morning, I turn it to face the windows, prop my heels on the window ledge and settle down to read with a strong cup of tea. I am both relaxed and alert. I savor each page while out of the corner of my eye I watch the blackbirds play in the trees along my street.  When I reach the end of a book, I feel a kinship to the author–the sort of intimacy that comes from the experience of just listening to somebody speak while not interrupting.

In reality, most of the time when scholars (and our students) read books like these, we are hunched over our computer or notebook. The book has been forcibly spread out flat with the necessary pages weighted down with elbows or our perennially full coffee mugs. I even have a nifty device to manage my texts on my behalf.

We read books and academic articles extractively, quickly skimming pages looking for sections or quotes that will support our own arguments. We teach our students to “read the abstract” and if the text looks “useful” then “read the introduction and conclusion but probably skip everything in between”.

Essentially, we mine these texts for data. Rather than listening and allowing the author to fully explain themselves, we interrupt and interject with our own ideas.

We do this because we find ourselves in an impossible situation where, in order to prove that we are “good scholars” (and maintain our jobs), we have to maintain a steady output of research. Most of our workweek is taken up with teaching responsibilities, so research has to be squeezed into whatever extra time remains. There’s just no time to put up your feet and take a leisurely stroll through another scholar’s hard work. (I paid dearly for those mornings with many extremely long and exhausting days of work the following weeks.)

My bookstand for subduing unruly research texts.

One of the ironies of this situation is that this expectation of constant research output translates into an exponential amount of research being released into the world. In accordance with a modern industrial logic, this should be reason to celebrate. Look at all the knowledge production!

But when we turn the university into a “knowledge” factory, the product isn’t actually knowledge. I’m not sure what it is, to be honest. By this, I’m not suggesting that our books and articles are devoid of valuable insights into the world (otherwise I’d be undermining my own work), but I’m reminded of what Marx refers to as the fetishization of commodities. What he meant by this concept is that, in the industrial process our commodities (things) become abstracted and disconnected from the hands that produce them. These individuals who make the products are even abstracted and disconnected from each other–replaceable figures on an assembly line. The meaning of a product is instead derived from its participation in the socio-economic act of exchange.

In the case of research, the “creator” or author is not obscured in the process, but I draw this comparison because I find that our work is often abstracted from the conversation that actually created it. As a scholar, I am not the creator of knowledge. Rather, it is my job to participate in an ongoing conversation among fellow knowledge seekers in our collective pursuit of understanding our world better. And it is my job to teach young people how to enter into this conversation. This is what Jack Halberstam, in their introduction to Fred Moten and Stefano Harney’s The Undercommons, suggests we should call study rather than knowledge production.

When we perceive knowledge as conversation rather than commodity or product, it changes how we engage it. In conversation, we speak but we also listen. In fact, the best conversationalists are usually also the best listeners.

So what if instead of just teaching my students how to speak, i.e. write a research paper, I also taught them how to listen? What might an end-of-term project look like in this scenario?

What if the academy rewarded me for research input, in addition to output? What if I was encouraged and supported in efforts to slow down and actually listen to my colleagues? What if I was funded to attend conferences even when I wasn’t presenting a paper? What if this was expected? What if the academic community gently discouraged “too much output” as indicative of “too much talking”, just as I ask my more chatty students to step back and allow their peers to speak?

It would require a massive shift in how the university currently thinks of its purpose in society, but that much we already knew was dearly needed.

*At the University of Groningen we run on a 4 block, 2 semester system in which each block is 7 weeks of teaching and 3 weeks of exams/resits. Our second block of the first semester finished early January after the Christmas break. We just finished Week 2 of block 3 of semester 2 (2a).

Featured image from Photo by Nothing Ahead from Pexels.

I’m writing this from my gate at LAX as I wait for my flight back to Denver. I’ve spent three frenetic weeks back in Southern California, mostly centered around my trip to the International Communication Association Conference in San Diego.
 
While a substantial portion of a professor’s job is to teach students, that is really only the tip of the iceberg—the most visible element to society. We can divide a professor’s responsibilities into three key areas: teaching, research, and academic service. The time spent on each area varies depending on the type of university employing that professor (research university, liberal arts college, etc.) and the status of the professor (adjunct/temporary appointment/assistant/associate/full, etc.). CU Boulder is a tier one research institution so research is an extremely significant aspect to the responsibilities of all our faculty. 
 
This emphasis, in turn, trickles down to us graduate students—especially since the job market in higher ed has become increasingly competitive. When future employers take a look at my CV, they will particularly look for teaching experience and publications (preferably in top academic journals).
 
Conferences are a platform to share research papers that you will subsequently submit for publication. They’re a great space to float ideas, get feedback and criticism, and then revise your work before offering it up to editorial scrutiny. They’re also a useful venue to meet other scholars doing work in one’s field, whether they be peers or seniors. 
 
 
The ICA conference, which I just attended, is probably the top gathering of communication and media scholars across the globe. It’s competitive; this year I believe the conference accepted around 45% of submissions. The sessions cover quite a range of subfields, from more comm-oriented fields like interpersonal communication and organizational communication to social science-oriented studies of media, such as those scholars studying media effects, to humanities-oriented studies of media, asking more philosophically or historically grounded questions about the nature of media and culture. At any given time over the five-day conference, you could select from around 20 different sessions. Then every evening there were receptions to attend, hosted by universities and ICA divisions either at the hotel or at restaurants in downtown SD.
 
Academic conferences are expensive to attend, so scholars usually only attend when they are presenting. That way you can often get your conference travel sponsored by your institution. I managed to get in this year, not because of my current research, but from building on some research I did while working at Biola and subsequently while studying at Claremont. I participated on a panel about MOOCs, Massive Open Online Courses, but I spoke specifically about the Minerva Schools, which are a Silicon Valley endeavor to supposedly revolutionize higher education. 
 

Instead, I argue that the Minerva Schools are primarily an effort to transform U.S. higher education into a high-return export while simultaneously raising some serious concerns about what we understand the role of the university to be in contemporary society. 
 

I encourage you to peruse their website and watch some of their videos, but pay careful attention to their rhetoric and the tangible implications of what they suggest. I’d love to hear your reactions, positive or negative. What do you like about what they offer, and what concerns you about their vision for education?

I now have a few (mostly) uninterrupted weeks with which to focus on my research.
 I have a busy summer, but I will be keeping you updated on my research trips, remaining conferences, and other related activities. Plus I’ll be sharing some thoughts from my current research projects, along with some other things about media and society that I’ve been contemplating. Here’s to a delightful change of pace!
 
 

When you plan a vacation, you tend to ask yourself a couple of key questions:

  • Where should I stay?
  • Where and what should I eat?
  • What should I wear?

And inevitably…

  • What should I do?

How you answer that last question can differ significantly depending on your personality, but your answer to the question of how best to occupy your time tends to fall into two general categories. If you’re like me, you do a bunch of research, make lists, and try to come up with a plan based on criteria such as affordability, enjoyability, and uniqueness. However, if you’re like my husband, then you probably eschew the list-making entirely and just show up in the city. My husband revels in spontaneity, taking each hour as it comes and chatting to locals for recommendations. 

His methodology tends to stress me out, but I have grown to really appreciate hours spent wandering through an unfamiliar city, watching people go about their daily lives in random non-touristy neighborhoods. We have stumbled upon some amazing discoveries this way, ranging from architectural to anecdotal to culinary. That being said, I still need a little structure or “just wandering” leaves me wondering what I might be missing.

Bridging that travelers’ gap between structure and spontaneity is a really fun app called Stray BootsSimply put, Stray Boots is a city tour-turned-scavenger hunt. Each Stray Boots tour guides you through a particular city district, introducing you to the history, culture, commerce, etc., of the area through a series of clever clues. You can play alone or in a team; all you need is a smart phone and a couple of hours!

Portland with Stray Boots 

I’m an unashamed, dedicated fan of The Amazing Race, so any opportunity to run around a city searching for hidden clues makes me happy. This app is particularly fantastic though for a number of reasons:

It’s a great way to get an overview of a city.
The scavenger hunt usually covers a 1-2 sq. mile radius but directs you to the most significant or most fascinating things to see and learn about while moving you along at a steady pace. Along the way you can expect to see both the “famous” parts of a city and the quieter gems off the beaten track. Because the app has no time limit, you can pause in any particular area that interests you for a longer period of time or make a note to come back another time. 


Old Town San Diego with Stray Boots 

  • It gamifies the classic tour.
    Learning about new places becomes interactive and fun through the form of a scavenger hunt. It is more likely you will remember what you learned because you weren’t just passively listening to a guide drone on. 
  • It’s a fantastic means to build community.
    While you can Stray Boots alone, they’re way more fun in a team. Whether your team is family, friends, or colleagues, it’s so much fun to try crack the puzzles together. You also learn quite a bit about your teammates and how they think or how they see the world. I’ve done all my Stray Boots experiences with family members and learned that my dad has a fantastic eye for spotting obscure details! 
  • You can meet interesting individuals.
    Besides your teammates, you also get to interact with vendors and locals on the tours to obtain answers. This is a handy way to break the ice with strangers and have a more robust conversation about their experience of the city. (Especially if you are a shy introvert like myself.)
  • You will end up with a fun set of souvenir photos from the hunt!
    I am really bad at remembering to take photos when I’m exploring cities. As part of Stray Boots, you are typically required to snap a few memorable moments with key landmarks. These assignments mean I am guaranteed to leave the city with some tangible (and postable) memories.

Pikes Market in Seattle with Stray Boots 

While Stray Boots isn’t necessarily for everyone–it’s still too much structure for my husband–they provide a great starting point for general wandering. In my family, there are several of us who stick closely to the Stray Boots path, while the others weave back and forth, forging their own destiny and occasionally crossing paths with the Stray Booters. It has proved to be the perfect vacation foundation, minimizing the urge to spend money on numerous attractions and opening up cities in fresh new ways.

So far I’ve done tours in San Diego, Portland, OR, and Seattle, and they were all amazing. I’d love to hear your experiences and see pictures from other tours. Here’s a tip: check Groupon first to see if they have any deals going on. (They usually do.) 
If you do a Stray Boots tour, let me know in the comments!

Featured image is courtesy of Wikimedia and provided for use under CC 2.0.



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